A brief historical account on the origin and meaning of the word "allosteric" is presented. The word was coined in an attempt to qualify the chemical mechanism of the feedback inhibition of bacterial enzymes by regulatory ligands. The data lead to the proposal that, at variance with the classical mechanism of mutual exclusion by steric hindrance, the inhibition takes place through an "allosteric" interaction between "no overlapping", stereospecifically distinct, sites for substrate and feedback inhibitor, mediated by a discrete reversible alteration of the molecular structure of the protein.
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